See Judge's Order That Threw Out Point Pleasant Beach GOP Vote

A judge threw out the Point Pleasant Beach Republican Club's endorsement of Mayor Stephen Reid's re-election on Wednesday. See the order below.

Now there will be an open primary that could impact the mayor's placement on the June 4 primary ballot, as well as his re-election chances against his opponent, Councilman Paul Kanitra.

Ocean County Assignment Judge Marlene Lynch Ford nullified the 115-110 vote that would have given Reid the "county-line" on the ballot, citing "irregularities" in the way the vote was handled.

Here is the judge's order:

Even though Reid won the endorsement from the club on March 25, Kanitra protested that he got more votes from people who were really eligible to participate – a claim that Reid disputes.

"I'm deeply disappointed," Reid said. "We, meaning the whole club, played by the rules. The big loser today were the voters whose votes were thrown out by the judge."

Reid, however, said he fully expects to win the primary even if his ballot placement changes. "This doesn't really change anything," he said. "I was going to have a primary anyway."

Kanitra said he believes the decision is "a huge victory for us and a huge loss for him. It validates everything I’ve been saying about how rigged it all was."

Kanitra said problems with the vote happened at the March 25 meeting that was run by John Jackson, a former club president who is supportive of Reid.

By allowing Jackson to run the meeting, Kanitra said, Reid "stepped into the power vacuum" after the current club president resigned to "put his people in place to rig the election."

Kanitra said he would have won the vote if nine unregistered voters weren't allowed to participate, despite objections and a motion from the floor to throw them out. Kanitra believes non-residents were allowed to participate.

"The club by-laws clearly state that you must be both a registered voter and a resident in town," Kanitra has said. "Not only did they allow in non-residents, but they didn't check IDs either."

Reid has said he saw the list of people Kanitra was referring to and says he believes they are residents of the town. "Everything was done fairly," he said.

Kanitra, meanwhile, said he requested a registered voting list directly from Ocean County and those nine names were not on there.

They were the difference in Reid's 5-vote margin, he said. Plus, there were 18 other voters who were Democrats and Independents whom the GOP never allowed to vote before, he said.